


Leaving my old life behind

by orphan_account



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Spoilers For The Entire Game, Virtual Reality, detailed content warnings in the notes, kokichi's crushes on shuichi and rantaro r in here but it's not shippy, yes another virtual reality au fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-28 04:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13263678
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: This didn’t seem like any sort of afterlife and there was no way that his supposedly destroyed brain could be having hallucinations. His heart was beating in his chest and he was breathing in and out. He massaged his temples.He had to find out what was going on. Somehow. Anyhow. But with jagged breath and pulsating veins he was restricted to this bed. With breath and veins, against his own free will, he was still alive.





	Leaving my old life behind

**Author's Note:**

> first of all cw for spoilers for pretty much the entirety of drv3, descriptions of death and violent events, and characters suffering from trauma that one would get after being forced to participate in a killing game. may not be an easy read if it's difficult for you to hear about ptsd, depression, or nihilism.  
> also, i stuck as close to canon as i could but there's also some assumptions/headcanons in here for some details that either weren't elaborated on or weren't present in the game. i tried to elaborate on them as much as i could but i thought i should say so so no one will be surprised when they pop up.  
> anyways, please enjoy!

So this was what it was like to be moments from death, huh?

 

Ouma was able to give the last of the directions to Momota before that poison had started to overtake him to a level where he couldn’t even stand on his feet. His shirt and favorite scarf went off and before he knew it he was being carefully placed like a doll in that exact spot on the hydraulic press where Kaito laid minutes ago. At least the astronaut was a decent enough person not to ask about the thing on his chest. It took him a while, but Kokichi, sickly and all, eventually managed to put himself into that exact place where he needed to be with Momota’s help.

 

This was it.

 

Kaito was now kneeling, staring at him intensely, as if awaiting some sort of final grand decree from the boy who was closer to death. But Kokichi had little to say. He turned as much as he could, grinned, and repeated the final words which he had rehearsed so many times in his head during his last few weeks.

 

“Good luck. And don’t fuck it up.”

 

Momota, of course, didn’t understand the reference. He did, however, look him in the eyes and give him an assuring nod while forcing himself to smile back.

 

“You did good, Ouma-kun.”

 

The last face he would ever see got up and started towards the platform, his feet slowly disappearing until they were gone.

 

That’s when the tears came.

 

To think that out of fucking everyone it would be Momota that he’d ‘kidnap’ and Momota that ended up trusting him and listening to him and Momota that was willing to carry out his plan for him. Momota was pretty much his opposite in all the outward confidence and trust that it entailed. It was in his nature to do something like this. Ouma had visions before his sleep each night about what could happen during and after the trial in one of the many alternate realities that presented themselves. In each one, no matter how successful he was, everyone hated him. Momota included. Saihara, duly so.

 

He liked to convince himself that his classmates’ feelings about him didn’t matter so he’d be able to live with what he was doing but of course they did. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cried over having been told he had to kill or after Amami’s death or after the third trial or after what he did to Gonta and Iruma or after Saihara called him pathetic or when he was letting it all out to Momota about forty five minutes ago. Or now.

 

But thankfully he was able to do all of that in private or in an exaggerated way where it would seem as if he was faking it lest the illusion be ruined.

 

What would’ve happened if he had just talked to Saihara, just once, and told him what he was thinking?

 

It was too late for those sort of thoughts. The plan was set in motion and the killing game was going to end in some form or another. What one or two or twenty or the millions of sadists watching him and his peers fight for their lives thought about his interpersonal relationships couldn’t matter any less. At least everyone who lived could go off and do all that mundane personal stuff in safety and comfort.

 

Not to mention that he lived an entire goddamn life before this thing.

 

The memories played in a supercut in his mind. Meeting his dog at the shelter for the first time. Being annoying and pulling pranks on his former classmates for fun. Road trips, international vacations, religious ceremonies. The humble beginnings of DICE out of the confines of his school with his only friend. Meeting all those people and growing DICE into the supremely evil organization that it is today. And all those horrible, heinous crimes he committed with his ever-growing following - teepeeing the entirety of the Tokyo Tower, making all the cotton candy machines on the boardwalk fair produce so much cotton candy that it coated every surface of the beach, letting all the animals in a kill shelter out of their cages so they could run free in the park. He even loved those days where he did nothing but sat in bed and watched obscure Soviet cartoons while finishing entire bottles of Panta and coming up with ideas for the layout of DICE’s future secret lair.

 

There was, of course, that questionable gap in his memory that lasted from being decreed as Japan’s Ultimate Supreme Leader to falling out of that locker in that dark, overgrown classroom. The spaceship thing was bullshit, he figured that much. He could never know what happened to him in his last moments in the outside world.

 

But, as he’d concluded before, some things are better left unknown.

 

The memories continued flooding in individually, the steel of the hydraulic press being the last thing he saw before he closed his eyes for the final time. The tears streamed hot down his face and to his chin and it took every ounce of willpower left within him to not wipe them away. But there was also a creeping smile on his face, a tiny glint of hope, as all those faces ran through his head.

 

DICE.

 

His dog.

 

His fellow prisoners in this infernal television soundstage.

 

Hell, even his family.

 

This stupid killing game reality show, along with his existence, will finally end.

 

The tears continued, his thoughts lightening into a haze as the hydraulic press began to work again.

  
  
  


**\--**

  
  
  


He wanted to scream, but couldn’t.

 

The weight of his entire body was crushed. It was broken into pieces or juiced out or whatever it was that happened when one’s body was smooshed by a hydraulic press. It was the greatest pain he had ever felt in his entire life. But, at the same time, there were no bones or muscles or limbs of his that felt as if they were in pain. Nothing was...connected. He still knew that he was in pain, and he felt it. Like every single part of his body had broken into a million pieces. But there was no body.

 

Wait.

 

How was the even thinking?

 

Shouldn’t he be dead by now?

 

He hadn’t expected not to lose his senses for a long period of time. He knew that the press would have pretty much destroyed everything in his entire body at once. He should be gone by now. Then why did he still feel intact? Why was his brain still functioning? But that was it - his brain. He was able to conjure up thousands of coherent thoughts per second, but he was stuck in the dark and silence of his own mind with no physical way to connect to whatever state it was he was in.

 

Maybe his parents and all those teachers had been right after all. Maybe there was something left beyond mortality after death. But there was no benevolent and glowing figure in white coming to take his hand. There were no gates or clouds. There were no fiery pits or horrible demons either. There was nothing at all.

 

But then it came to him.

 

Maybe, just maybe, this was hell.

 

Maybe he ended up in hell.

 

To have been a person who took advantage of others, convincingly pretended not to care for their well-being, and to have kept to yourself in a life-threatening situation, no matter what the intended outcome of it may be, would surely land you in hell. And this ‘hell’ wasn’t made out of degrading physical and mental punishments in the torrid underworld of some fictional character. No, it was much worse.

 

Hell was when a horrible person who did horrible things was stuck, senseless, in a world of black with nothing but their own thoughts to keep them company.

 

It was a fitting punishment for someone like him.

  
  
  


**\--**

  
  
  


There was a harsh white light in front of him. It came suddenly and obscured his vision and his thoughts. His eyes blinked and squeezed at the sudden, intense pain.

 

He could feel his eyes.

 

Maybe there was an afterlife after all? Maybe he was wrong and he was going to heaven? His vision was still blurry all the while, even after blinking and squeezing his eyes. He had the instinct to try to rub them but his hands were being held down by something.

 

He could feel his hands.

 

A new yet familiar sense of consciousness spread throughout him. He could feel every part of his body, from his head to his toes. It wasn’t that his body was feeling anything in particular, it was simply present at that current moment, at that current place. From the rise and fall of his lungs to the wriggling of his fingers, he was whole and present. There was something heavy attached to his head, but he could feel his body.

 

He could feel his body _again_.

 

But there was still something...wrong. Or right, he supposed. It wasn’t that his body was in pain, it’s just that it felt, for lack of better words, broken. Heavy. Like it had been smashed to millions of pieces. By a hydraulic press. Yet it felt completely whole and like it had been when he’d woken up that morning. He was breathing heavily, with long pauses between each exhale, as if he were being choked.

 

After having adjusted to the light, all he could see were the off-white tiles of the ceiling. The ceiling? Yeah, the ceiling. He could tell from the way his head felt that he was laying down, and from the way the light shone that he was indoors.  Other than this, there was something strange obscuring his vision, like a light reflecting from a clear surface. Was he being...encased in something?

 

The room was filled with the hum of a machine and chatter, though he wasn’t exactly able to make out much at first since whatever was obscuring him also obscured any sound. The deep voice of what he assumed to be an adult woman was doing most of the talking. Thankfully, she was pretty loud, so he could hear a couple of words clearly.

 

“...vitals…”

 

“...from shock…”

 

“...healthy…”

 

“...trauma…”

 

“...impact…”

 

“...died.”

 

What the hell.

 

With something like a fizzing sound, his encasing was flipped open and he could finally see the world clearly. Light weights that were scattered all around his body - suction cups and needles, he figured  - were detached. There wasn’t much breeze in the room, but the breeze that he did feel was cold and he felt it all over.

 

There were grips on either of his arms and shoulders and he was hoisted up. The blood rushed from his head back into the rest of his body. He shuddered as the hands were wrapped around him, still feeling like something of a pancake. It was hard to even breathe when your lungs were practically flat in your gut. Another pair of hands forced him into what he assumed was a paper gown. It was only after he was sat in what he assumed to be a wheelchair and rolled out of the room that he could finally get a good look at his surroundings.

 

He didn’t see much of the room he just left, only some walls that matched the ceilings, before a young woman dressed in scrubs began steering him through a series of hallways. The hallways were a stark white and mostly empty save for the occasional sharply-dressed businessperson. Any person that he did see stared at him until he passed by. He even heard one quietly whisper his name to themselves. Not his full name. They had whispered it as if they knew him.

 

“Ouma-kun…”

 

The woman in scrubs, the wheelchair, the paper gown, the words he heard that woman saying while he was encased. This had to be a hospital, right? No, something was off. Seriously off.

 

After an elevator ride and another hallway, they stopped at a door marked only with a number, which the nurse unlocked with a card before letting him in. It was a plain room. Nothing on the walls, no windows. Just a bed and a monitor across from it. The nurse lifted him from the wheelchair and placed him inside the covers. After informing him that she would be back shortly to help him shower, she handed him a remote and left.

 

Kokichi clicked the power button on the remote beside him. The monitor turned on in a quick flash.

 

A familiar, annoying, high-pitched voice that could only belong to Monokuma was performing an enthusiastic overdub.

 

“...Ouma-kun and Momota-kun have disappeared! Both the victim and the culprit are unknown! Will the valiant remaining students figure out the truth? Will the missing students make their return? Also, what in the world could be going on?! I can’t wait to find out, upupu! You can find out too on next week’s episode of-”

 

The screen lit up with a flashy logo that he didn’t immediately recognize.

 

“NEW DANGANRONPA V3! Watch at 21:00...”

 

Oh.

  
  
  


**\--**

  
  
  


The night came and went. The nurse helped him to a bathroom to take a shower and brush his teeth. She was nice enough not to make any comments about his body either. He was given clean clothes - pajamas - and brought back to his bed. He was then served dinner, but couldn’t bring himself to eat much. He couldn’t bring himself to do much of anything except for sleep for two or three hours and unwittingly expose himself to whatever shitty late night television programming that was on.

 

He tried asking the nurse multiple times to phone one of his comrades in DICE, or even his fucking parents, or anyone he knew at all. But he couldn’t even muster up the strength to speak or even let noises out of his throat. The nurse didn’t offer up the option either, and the few other staff that he passed by didn’t either. So he was stuck in this hospital place, post-mortem, dangerously physically weak, and probably on the brink of insanity.

 

As he sat in the darkness with the bright light of the monitor making his head spin his thoughts cycled from his plan, to wondering whether his plan would work, to wondering what was going on in the academy right now, to wondering where he was, to wondering about the status of the other kids at the academy, to wondering about Saihara’s well-being in particular, to wondering whether Saihara and the others would catch on to his plan or try to debunk it, to wondering whether his plan would work, to hating himself for continuing to live.

 

He was alive, he knew that much. He could feel his body and see and hear everything so clearly. There was no afterlife, and even if there was, it certainly looked nothing like this.

 

There was some sort of line in reality, between death and life that had been blurred to the point where he could still exist.

 

Kokichi thought of ‘Danganronpa. He was on a TV show. He was being filmed.

 

He knew that. Of course he did. It was obvious that he and the others were being filmed from the beginning. Why else would Monokuma have been such a stickler for his own rules? Why else would the ‘game’ have such a specific, campy structure? Why else would an eclectic array of personalities be gathered in one place? There was no way the mastermind was putting on a show just for themselves. Gonta’s discovery of the Nanokumas and that one book about the history of Hope’s Peak Academy which Kokichi _accidentally_ left on the floor of his research lab opened to the most important page in the very probable case _someone_ were to find it were further evidence that helped him come to the conclusion. The only other viable explanation was that the mastermind, whoever they were, was a high-ranking Scientologist, but although they were an insufferable piece of shit sadist, Kokichi highly doubted that they held any power within the international cult.  

 

Whatever it was that was going on, he wanted to get to the bottom of it. There were probably clues around the...place that he was in right now. He _had_ to get to the bottom of it. But his legs were heavy and he felt so feint. But he _had to_. But his limbs were filled with rocks and his head was spinning so much that he couldn’t support it on his shoulders. He rested it back on the pillow, propped up so he could see the television screen.

 

What sort of sick joke was this?

 

He was definitely in that school. Every single hallway and corridor was imprinted into his memory like a map. The covers of the bed in his dorm room, the food in the cafeteria. The elaborate research labs. The pages among pages of files and books that he’d spent hours skimming through so he could understand the situation better.

 

He was definitely forced into that killing game. He could still see, smell those corpses. He could still feel the tension from all of those trials as if they were yesterday. He could still remember those nights he spent in his room doing nothing but talking to himself. Having to say out loud that he was having fun while sobbing and trembling in the interim. Just so he’d be able to live with himself.

 

And he definitely met all of those people. His heart swelled as he visualized their names, faces, voices, personalities. He could still pinpoint each of their speech patterns, nervous habits, and unique reactions to an array of stimuli. He could still remember everything he’d been able to find out about their pasts, the kind of people they were, what was most important to them. He could still feel the fear and dejection of not being able to communicate directly with anyone (not until the very end, at least), no matter how much it hurt.

 

He was dead. The poisoned arrow pierced his arm. He didn’t drink that antidote. The hydraulic press crushed him. Even after that, he’d been through some sort of hell. And he lost sleep planning everything for months and preparing himself for the end of his life. For the end of the killing game.

 

Yet he was here. He woke up in that encasing in that weird bed and now he was in another, more normal bed forcing himself through some cheesy thirty year old sitcom that happened to be airing at that exact moment. This didn’t seem like any sort of afterlife and there was no way that his supposedly destroyed brain could be having hallucinations. His heart was beating in his chest and he was breathing in and out. He massaged his temples.

 

He had to find out what was going on. Somehow. Anyhow. But with jagged breath and pulsating veins he was restricted to this bed. With breath and veins, against his own free will, he was still alive.

 

There was no way to know of the passing of time other than when the television announced it. The hours went by quickly, his room dark all the while. A little after the television announcer proclaimed that it was eight the nurse from yesterday came into his room with a tray of what Ouma assumed to be breakfast and a cocktail of pills.

 

He...did take meds, right?

 

“Be sure you take those pills with your tea, Ouma-kun. They’re good for you.” The nurse pulled out a table from the side of the bed and placed the food on it. “I’ll be back later to clear your tray.”

 

As she left wordlessly, Kokichi pulled himself up as much as he could to face his meal. His first instinct was to examine each of the pills one by one. He didn’t assume that they were dangerous in any way but one could never be too sure. Yet…he had a gut feeling that he was fine. Gut feelings aren’t always trustworthy either. Since he was a supreme leader of evil, the whatevers in the wherever he was may have reason to kill him. They could-no. He was fine. This was fine. The much-coveted supremely evil high chairman ended up placing all the pills on his tongue at once and taking a big gulp of the tea to wash them down.

 

Which was a horrible idea since the tea was burning hot.

 

Kokichi’s ability to shift moods so quickly was something that even he could never figure out.

 

It took him about a quarter of an hour or so to finish his breakfast. Who knew it only took two or three hours of sleep and an existential crisis where you panic over not being able to figure out your own state of being to be able to eat again? Well, on the bright side, he did sort of feel like more like a person now.

 

The nurse wasn’t coming by so he decided to slowly drag himself across the hall to the bathroom so he could freshen up. His limbs felt as if they were being held on ball and chain, every muscle aching as he took a step. While slowly pacing himself he brushed his teeth and washed his face and-

 

looked in the mirror.

 

And touched his face in the reflection.

 

It was him. Nothing had changed since he freshened up in his dorm room yesterday morning. His hair was a little messier than usual, lips chapped, skin as pale as always. He had those same chubby cheeks and wide eyes that he hated but worked for him when he needed them to. He could feel his fingertips cold on the glass. He could feel his fingertips warm on the skin when he brought them to his face. It was him, right here, right now.

 

He placed both of his hands firmly on the sink, squeezing it as tight as he could, shut his eyes, and took a deep breath.

 

“Ouma-kun! What are you doing?”

 

The nurse walked briskly into the bathroom. Kokichi lost his focus, opening his eyes and facing her with his resting poker face.

 

“I’m glad that you can walk on your own again, but it’s still in your best interest to get some rest for now. Come.”

 

Kokichi walked out of the bathroom, the nurse guiding him with a gentle hand on his back to his room and then to his bed. She cleared the finished breakfast tray and put the table back in its place. As Kokichi assumed she was going to leave, she tentatively stood in the crack of the half-opened door.

 

“Ouma-kun. I don’t know how you’re feeling right now, but there’s someone who wants to come visit you.”

 

Someone...who wants to come visit him? He cocked his head in a such a way so the nurse would understand he wanted her to elaborate.

 

“I thought I should warn you. He’s...a classmate of yours.”

 

A classmate? He couldn’t think of any classmates he was on good terms with that weren’t members of his organization.

 

“You know, from the Academy for Gifted Juveniles.”

 

Wait...what?

 

“And...it may be strange for you, but...well, you can see for yourself. If you want to see him, that is.”

 

_What?!_

 

“So...would you like for him to come in? There’s absolutely no pressure-”

 

Kokichi nodded as vigorously and visibly as he could.

 

“Well, I’ll go and tell him that he can come visit you. I shouldn’t be too long.”

 

The nurse closed the door behind her.

 

Kokichi sat upright in his bed, paralyzed. Blood pumped fast to his heart.

 

It took a few minutes but the guest let himself in, closing the door as quietly as possible  behind him.

 

Amami Rantaro.

 

He didn’t look the same as when he had first seen him. The piercing on his eyebrow was taken out and he was wearing significantly less makeup along with some black designer t shirt and a pair of sweatpants. He didn’t look the same as when he had last seen him because the last time he saw him he was dead and bloodied.

 

The nurse was right.

 

“They told you to come in here to explain whatever the hell that’s happening right now, didn’t they? They thought it’d soften the blow if someone I already knew did it but no one wanted to come talk to me except for you.”

 

The first words that came out of his mouth since he’d died. He had no idea why his brain decided that only now was the right time to speak. He was probably going to think it but it came out of his mouth like falling teeth. Not to mention that the statement was based in assumptions that he couldn’t confirm. Not yet, at least. But he was right and he knew it from the way Rantaro uncomfortably repositioned himself against the wall he was leaning on.

 

“You read me the moment I came into the room? Impressive.”

Cool and collected as always. As always for the short time he knew him before now. And he’d only known him for a television show in which he sort of broke the fourth wall and was probably lying about his entire character. He was practically a stranger to him.

 

“Come here.”

 

Amami sat on the bed beside him hesitantly.

 

Ouma mustered up all the strength he had to pull himself up and hug him.

 

His arms squeezed tight around his torso as he buried his head into his chest. And, of course, he was crying, his tears staining the fabric of Amami’s shirt.

 

Amami was a stranger to him, sure, but he saw his corpse laying right in front of him. The image was still fresh in his mind. He was the first person he’d met in the school, having ‘woken up’ in the locker next to his. After he died, he’d raided his room and snuck into his locked research lab because he’d obviously known something that everyone else didn’t. Not to mention that he’d gotten Gonta to hang up that wax effigy of him that Yonaga made in his room for some cake from the Monomono Machine. But that was a whole other can of worms.

 

He was a stranger, and at the same time, he knew everything about him. Well, not everything, but a pretty good deal.

 

And now, they were here.

 

He felt Amami’s arms around him, his grip lighter, his head resting on top of his own.

 

“You’re supposed to be dead, Amami-chan.”

 

“So are you.”

 

Kokichi squeezed even tighter.

 

He wondered about what it was like to watch someone cry over your death on television, even if it seemed like they were faking it. He wondered if he would have to do the same thing in the following weeks. (Well, no one would cry over _his_ death, that was for sure.)

 

They sat in the silence of each other’s arms for several minutes. Ouma wasn’t a hugger in the least but at that moment he reflected on how comforting physical contact could be. It was usually better to hug his dog than any human as humans had that insufferable ability of trying to empathize with you. The rest of the tears came in silence and Amami didn’t seem to mind. What was there to even say in a situation like this?

 

When the tears were almost completely gone, Kokichi let go and sat himself up, looking Amami in the eye.  

 

“So, what the hell is happening right now?”

 

Amami looked at anything that wasn’t Kokichi. That was one thing he remembered - under that cool exterior, he was a nervous person. It was kind of endearing.

 

“Straight to it, huh.”

 

“It’s been less than a day and I’ve already died, went to hell, woken up alive in a hospital, saw Monokuma talk about me on television, and reunited with a guy who I literally saw dead in front of me.” Ouma made sure to keep his tone light so he wouldn’t sound as if he were angry. “I don’t really feel like talking about the weather, y’know?”

 

“You make a compelling point.” Amami smiled softly. Having so many younger siblings would have probably made him as immune to sass as he is. “I’ll get straight to it, then.”

 

Again, they sat in silence, though apart this time. Kokichi scanned the details of Rantaro’s face as he stared beyond the other boy’s shoulder at nothing in particular. He was taking a while to think for himself, it seemed. There was a lot to say.

 

“Well, first of all…certain...memories of yours were completely wiped before you-before we woke up in that classroom. It happened to everyone, myself included. Everything’ll come back eventually.”

 

The tone in his voice was anxious and he was taking frequent and silent deep breaths in order to calm himself.

 

Ouma scanned his memories for anything that was amiss. But everything seemed in place. There were the obvious lies the flashback lights had instilled, and although they seemed as real as could be, he knew that they couldn’t have been. Other than that, he couldn’t fathom the possibility that any memory of his was erased.

 

“It may take a while before you get everything back. They’re pretty generous with helping you recover your memories here, but there’s some more integral truths that you probably won’t be able to find out until you leave the facility. And even that’s dangerous in its own right.”

 

Integral truths?

 

Of course. Integral truths.

 

What happened in the time period shortly after his inauguration as an Ultimate and his arrival at the Academy? How did he get on the show? Did he know about it? There was one that was more harrowing than the others - had whoever was in charge of the game done anything to him besides erase his memories?

 

The ‘they’ that Amami mentioned?

 

“Who’s ‘they’?”

 

Amami placed a hand on his shoulder.

 

“You do know we were on a reality TV show, right? Danganronpa V-”

 

“Yeah, I know. I figured it out pretty much as soon as Monokuma showed up!” And that was the truth.

 

Amami crossed his arms. “As soon as Monokuma showed up. Really.”

 

“Yeah, really!” Kokichi conjured up the most exaggerated pout his face would allow him. There was no use in being silly right now but he could never help himself when there was an opportunity. “Would I ever lie to you, Amami-chan?”

 

Rantaro chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand. “Well, i don’t really see why you’d have a reason to lie to me about that, so I’ll choose to believe you.”

 

God _damn_ was he clever.

 

“I don’t know what exactly you managed to figure out but Danganronpa isn’t, well...an actual killing game.  Well, it used to be. But there was some sort of legal battle a couple of years ago and Team Danganronpa - the group that manages it - was forbidden from actually having kids kill each other. But it’s also this multi-million dollar, worldwide franchise. They had to continue it some other way. So now...now, it’s operated through a realistic virtual reality program.”

 

He said the next part in a quieter voice, leaning into the smaller boy as if telling him a secret.

 

“Realistic to the point where it may as well be real life for the participants and they’re stuck with the physical, emotional, and psychological effects. Just erase all the kids’ memories, put them in, take them back out, and hold them in a private hospital of sorts until the show’s over so they can ‘recover’ up to the government’s standards. Then do it all over again next year.”

 

Kokichi couldn’t help but recall the Stanford prison experiment.

 

It explained everything. The humming of the machine, the tubes, the vials, the doctors and nurses. It explained why he still felt as if he should be dead and how everything that had happened in the Academy for Gifted Juveniles seemed so incredibly real all the while. Even all of those erased memories. How else could he have forgotten how he got there? Not just that, even - why would he need to remember that he took fucking medications if he were to be in a virtual reality for a TV show?

 

It explained the most important factor - how he was still alive. Everyone else was alive, too. Everyone experienced that pain and anguish and cried and bled. And from the way he was feeling he assumed that everyone was still feeling it themselves. He’d physically seen nine people brutally come to their ends, two indirectly because of him. He’d died himself. But knowing it was all ‘fake’ didn’t and would never do anything to alleviate him. It was all invalid, in a way. As if it had happened, and they were affected, but then it didn’t, and the effects lingered on for what seemed like no reason at all.

 

He tried to backtrack for a little bit, wondering if there was any way he could’ve figured this out before his death.

 

No, of course there wasn’t.

 

Kokichi thought of Saihara again. He thought of Saihara’s body laying on a bed similar to the one he woke up on, connected to an array of machines through tubes and such. Alive, but lifeless, as if he were in a coma. He seemed as if he were peacefully asleep, his face calm and eyes closed. But his body was being controlled. He was in a fake reality that seemed so incredibly real to him. His body - no - his entire existence was on an entirely different timeline all so he could ‘live’ again next week for the billions of people watching. And the worst part was that he was none the wiser. No one who was still left was either. Kokichi certainly wasn’t when it happened to him.

 

Somehow he still hated himself for not knowing. There’s so many things they could’ve done to him before and while he was put under. He was like some sort of guinea pig. They all were.

There was something different about Amami from the start, though. Not just that he’d survived the last game, but that they’d most likely let him know more about the situation than they did the first-timers. Kokichi knew from the video that video he filmed for himself that he’d  watched in his research lab that his memories had been erased, but…

 

...was that really true?

 

Something else he’d heard Amami say in the video echoed in his mind.

 

_“You wanted this.”_

 

He didn’t want to believe that Amami had actually wanted the game, but he also knew that only idiots denied the truth as to not hurt their own feelings. He had to check.

 

“Why did you do it again?”

 

He’d asked that question out loud after watching the video and while speaking to that effigy that hung in his room. He knew he would never get an answer. But it didn’t matter then. Not only because there was a killing game to end and because he knew that Amami was long dead but also because there was no one for him to talk to but himself and he thought he’d never be able to get an answer anyways.

 

“It’s...it’s a long story.”

 

The Survivor looked up and to the right.

 

“Two others and I had survived the last killing game. I...threatened to commit double suicide with another participant I was close to. And Team Danganronpa, well. Team Danganronpa ‘punished’ me by making me participate in the next killing game. They gave me some perks but I had to go in blind other than that. They’d probably thought it was worse than death. More ‘despairing’ as they’d probably put it.”

 

Kokichi knew...a good amount of that already. From the way Rantaro was telling him everything, he assumed that he hadn’t reached his own research lab in the days before he died. How could he have in the week or so that he was in the game? Ouma probably had several months over him in that regard.

 

The part he didn’t know sounded eerily similar to the first book of a young adult trilogy that was popular a few years back, but with a worse ending.

 

And he didn’t want to ask about what Amami meant by ‘despairing’.

 

But that wasn’t really what he meant to ask. The real question was, how _willing_ was Amami to actually do this again? This was a TV show after all, and forcing participants to play a game like that against their will was surely against the law. If that were the case, Amami probably had to sign onto some waiver or agreement.

 

Did that mean he was a willing participant as well?

 

But this was just a reality TV show that was happening through a virtual reality program. No one was actually dead. Long-term psychological effects on the participants, sure, but...no one was actually dead. It was mindless entertainment. It was all meaningless.

 

That’s surely how Team Danganronpa would defend themselves.

 

There was no way in hell that they were willing participants.

 

Even if the original ‘killing games’ had involved actual murder and this one didn’t, there was no way to condone doing something like this. It wasn’t mindless and it sure as hell wasn’t harmless. No matter how ‘real’ or ‘fictional’ it was, Team Danganronpa was profiting off the trauma and (apparent) death of actual teenagers.

 

“There was this girl in the last season - the Ultimate Therapist. She’s very proficient in psychology, in how to manipulate people and make them tick. Well, of course she is. She’s the best therapist high schooler in the country. Or, she was - she’s in college now. But that’s beside the point.”

 

Amami moved a little closer to the other boy, leaning into him again.

 

“So the writers thought she’d be a perfect sort of villain character. She had a good heart, but she wasn’t as clever as you are. She didn’t catch on. She succumbed to the pressure of what was happening around her, not to mention the motives and the encouragement from Monokuma. The only thing she could really understand was that she had to enjoy the game to stay alive and to ‘win’. And she took it completely to heart.”

 

He was taking longer and longer pauses throughout his sentences.

 

“She...she murdered three people. Three. In the span of a night. She did it so carefully, too. The trial took almost twenty four hours before we could deduce that it was her. Monokuma wouldn’t let us leave the courtroom until we figured it out. Someone even fainted at their stand because their blood sugar got so low. But..when we finally gathered that it was her, she was just. She was just completely satisfied. She looked as if she’d triumphed over us.”

 

His hands were shaking.

 

“When we were let back to the outside world, she was harassed. Constantly. On social media and in real life. For being so cruel. For committing a murder that was so hard to solve. And even for ‘speeding up the game because she killed too many people at once’. There were also people who praised her for being so cold and calculated, which is horrible in its own right. But it was all the same at the end.”

 

He looked him right in the eye with a gaze so piercing and forlorn.

 

“She was receiving death threats because she was acting the way she was manipulated into acting for a fucking television show.”

 

Amami clasped his hands together, his eyes fixated on his twiddling thumbs. He seemed like an entirely different person than the aloof and mysterious guy Ouma had met when they were in the VR together.

 

“And-and even after all of the therapy she received to adjust back to normal life all she could do was smile in the face of all of that hysteria. The memory wiping and personality altering completely ruined her. There was this one thing she’d said at the reunion show all the students who died before the finale had to do.”

 

Kokichi briefly entertained the idea of rubbing circles on his back to comfort him but quickly dismissed it.

 

“I don’t remember exactly what it was that she said since I wasn't there but it was more or less something like this; ‘It was fun. It was an interesting journey and I really don’t regret it. I gave you all a good mystery to solve. I did my best. I really thought I could win this thing. That’s all that really matters, right?’ We would’ve gotten our asses handed back to us if we’d had any other sentiments but she was just so...genuine. She really believed it. It was...one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in my life.”

 

Amami looked him in the eyes.

 

“Do you get what I’m saying?”

 

Kokichi nodded.

 

When it was all said and done, he really had no idea how to deal with people who were opening themselves up to him. Very few have. And even when someone did, despite all of his tricks and maneuvers and lies, all he could really do was sit in silence. He wasn’t callous. It was the way he was.

 

So he sat in silence, thinking.

 

“...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to ramble like that.”

 

There was so much in that story that paralleled his.

 

“I was the villain, too.”

 

Amami looked at his face, eyes widened.

 

“I mean, you saw the show, right? All those things I did. I hated it, I hated all of it. I really did. It was all-”

 

He really wished he had a better way to put this that didn’t sound like it were out of a melodramatic soap opera.

 

“It was a lie. I had to do it, you know. Somebody did. That’s what it does to people. I don’t fucking care if it was real or not. That’s what it does.”

 

Rantaro put his index finger in front of his lips, nudging his head away from them. Kokichi nodded and continued in a quieter voice.

 

“They knew I was onto them, too. They didn’t know everything but they _knew._ That’s why Harukawa tried to kill me, right? There was a sort of narrative that I wasn’t following. And they can control whatever they want.”

 

Kokichi felt a sharp tug in the depths of his stomach. He clenched his fists. At least he wasn’t breaking down into tears now.

 

That was...everything. It seemed ridiculous to think of it as a _Brave New World_ -esque scenario, but everything came together as he’d spewed that stream of consciousness to his Amami-chan, ever-patient and attentive. You could play a game for as long as you wanted but you would never really understand how it worked until you saw it from the point of view of the gamemaker.

 

Amami was now rubbing his shoulders, his head leaning toward him. Kokichi didn’t usually like being comforted like this but he felt too stunted to care at this point.

 

“I was actually talking about it a bit with one of these psychologists they keep around the other day. They’re not usually that useful ‘cause they’re employed by Team Danganronpa, so...yeah. Well, he let me watch the episodes from the last season to help me regain my memories. It’s just, you know...it’s so obvious how they’re thinking once you start watching it again. And even if you confront them about it, they’ll be like, ‘you know it’s TV, right?’”

 

He took his hands off his shoulders.

 

“I know that you must be going through a lot right now, but, honestly,” he said in a semi-whisper, “the ‘psychologists’ here are shit. Get a better therapist once the show finishes airing and they let us out of here.

 

Ouma really wished that he knew why Amami was giving him all of these friendly tips even though he’d just come out to him in a frustrated mess about being the villain or whatever. Telling people things was always the absolute worst.

 

“You can talk to me if you need to. Or Akamatsu-chan, even. We talked to the other guy earlier this morning. Their opinions aren’t worth much but he did say that you would be one of the most affected out of all of us so far. You, Hoshi, and Shinguji in particular.”

 

Hoshi and Shinguji? Yeah, that checked out. Hoshi was practically suicidal, and with reason. Shinguji was an insane, incestual serial killer, which spoke for itself, really. Not to mention the devout cultist Yonaga, the George of the Jungle-esque Gokuhara, and the chronically insecure Iruma, among others. With all the other lies that were being spewed at them while they were on the show, Kokichi felt as if he couldn’t be sure to what extent he should believe that their personalities weren’t complete fabrications. For all he knew, they could’ve been created out of scratch with the intent of making the show more interesting.

 

But in that case, who was he? He was definitely Ouma Kokichi and he was definitely the leader of DICE and he definitely did all those things in the Academy for Gifted Juveniles. His life was his, as far as he knew. Which would mean that this was the case for everyone else as well.

Whoever he’d been before, he’d never be that guy again.

 

“Well, that’s not the say the rest of us weren’t-”

 

“No, it’s fine. I get it.”

 

Someone who’d had to lie to himself so he’d be able to live with the things he did to conform to the merciless standards of the show would and should feel more emotionally stunted than someone who’d just wanted everyone to get along and work together, or someone who was too stubborn and positive to let anything change him, or even a brainwashed cult member, but it hurt all of them all the same.

 

From the way Amami awkwardly kept switching the way he sat, Kokichi could tell that that was all he had to tell him. But he still had questions. So many more questions. He figured that Amami probably didn’t know everything, but he also didn’t want him to leave. He could barely walk himself and he was pretty sure none of the other students wanted to see him. Except for his Amami-chan (and Akamatsu, apparently, though she’d probably just be too polite to say anything).

 

Kokichi went into a hushed voice again. “Do you...know if anyone’s doing anything to stop them?”

 

“Well...hm.” Amami stroked his chin with his thumb. “Since the last time we talked about it, I think my dad wanted to speak to our lawyer about a lawsuit.”

 

Oh, right. He forgot that Amami was filthy stinking rich. How else would he be able to travel all the time?

 

“There’s some NPOs that are fighting against them, too. They’re doing better work than any well paid lawyer ever could. I think one of them filed that lawsuit that made Danganronpa stop having actual killings but...I don’t remember.”

 

He sighed, giving Kokichi an earnest expression.

 

“Honestly, I can’t tell you much other than that. Memory loss, you know. There’s some things they want you to forget about more than others.”

 

Figures. Tricky bastards. At least Amami was telling him everything he could. And he knew he wasn’t lying. Well, since he was telling him the truth, Kokichi concluded that he should return the favor. Not by telling him everything, but by telling him the truth. But not in a straightforward or completely honest manner, of course.

 

“You know...I kept the wax effigy that Yonaga made of you in my room, you know. I took it from her lab after she was murdered. I don’t know what they put on the show but-”

 

“I know. Gokuhara told me.” He was smiling as if it were nothing. Of course Kokichi would do something like that. He was a wildcard of sorts who did ridiculous and questionable things. It was best to leave it at that and not continue with how he liked to talk to it to comfort himself since he couldn’t talk to anyone else.

 

Some things are better left unknown.

 

There was a knock on the door.

 

“Ouma-kun?” It was the nurse, speaking to him from outside the room. “I really don’t mean to interrupt, but I was wondering if I could get you anything...a drink, or something to do, or-”

 

“I’m fine.” He said it as loud as he could without shouting.

 

She paused for a minute. “...Oh. Oh, my!”

 

“Huh? What is it?”

 

“No-nothing, really. It’s just that your voice sounds so much more different in real life than it does on television.”

  
  
  


**\--**

  
  
  


That week had been one of the longest in his life. Ouma heeded Amami’s advice and didn’t take up any offer to talk to a psychologist when asked. He went against the nurse’s advice and practiced walking in his room for a couple of hours each day until it wasn’t as hard anymore. He started eating and sleeping slightly more normally after a while as well. He could eventually do most things himself, including walking to Amami’s room (which was, as it turned out, four doors down) to talk.

 

Akamatsu joined them sometimes, too. Just as he’d suspected, she didn’t seem to mind him at all. She had this way of looking at things that if she could convince herself that everything was alright, it was. Sort of like the opposite of him. So that was how she’d internalized the situation. By going good on her hope to become friends with everyone when they left the Academy. That’s not to say she wasn’t having a hard time, she just wanted everyone else...not to. It was admirable.

 

The only thing that he really didn’t like about her was how, like Amami, it was really impossible to mess with her. She got annoyed, but rather than seeing him simply as an annoyance when he bothered her, she saw him as a little kid who wanted her attention. Being seen as a little kid was never fun. But the girl had major balls.

 

Other than that, he was afraid of talking to any of the other kids. God knew they hated him and God knew they had reason to. He was content with Amami, Akamatsu, and the games he was playing since the nurse brought a console into his room. He’d just wait until the show was over and they’d let him leave so he could go back home and see DICE again and get a therapist and everything would be okay. No, it probably wouldn’t be okay, it never would. He just really didn’t want to be here.

 

But then Friday came, and apparently that was the day Danganronpa came on. One part of him was too frightened to watch the show. He didn’t want to be back at the Academy for Gifted Juveniles, even if that meant watching it through a screen. He didn’t want to see the kids that were still ‘alive’ going through what he’d been through. There were knots in his stomach just thinking about it.

 

Another part of him just wanted to see what would happen. He spent so much time trying to end the killing game that he’d spent all those nights coming up with different scenarios for his script. Even now with everything that happened, a small part of him couldn’t help but wonder. What if this was it? His plan was definitely nothing like any of the bastards who watched from week to week knew and loved. It was a big middle finger to the entire goddamn establishment. Maybe it’d even make them feel something for the first time in their lives. Even if there were nights he spent with hardly any sleep wishing he were dead, the one small mercy of being alive was that he was able to see all his hard work through to the end. And it could really possibly end all of this.

 

He’d relayed an abridged and less emotional version of this to Amami and Akamatsu when they gathered in Ouma’s room on Friday morning.

 

“I mean, you don’t have to push yourself if you don’t want to.” Akamatsu was serious, looking at him square in the face. “But we all watch the episodes together in the common room. Maybe you could come join us?”

 

Kokichi didn’t respond.

 

“You...don’t have to watch it with us if you don’t want to, I mean. Maybe just go see everyone else? Everyone’s going through the same thing.”

 

He looked at Amami, who just shrugged.

 

There was no fucking way that they were all going through the same thing. It’s not like he was carrying some extra burden but not everyone was the ‘villain’. And everyone probably still remembered in detail everything he did. Facing them would just feel like a sword through his stomach.

 

“...I mean, I don’t mind. I won’t be there for long, though.”

 

It was a lie, albeit a painful one. He really didn’t know why he made himself do painful things and especially now when he was supposed to be coming to his senses. It was probably his stupid curiosity getting the best of him again. Did he really have to know everything?

 

“You’ll be fine, Ouma-kun. Everyone should be in the common room at this time of day. Amami-kun and I’ll come with you.”

 

And so they did, although it was more like he was the one coming with them from the way he drifted behind them. It was an elevator ride and a hallway before they reached the common room. Five or so minutes of Kokichi looking at his feet and wondering what the hell he would do.

 

The common room was spacious and modern. It was sparsely decorated and attached to what Ouma assumed was a kitchen. Like the rest of the building, it had no windows.

 

And inside were everyone else.

 

Hoshi was seated at a table with Tojo setting a tray of tea and cookies in front of him.

 

Gokuhara and Iruma were seated on a couch in front of a television, controllers in hand, playing some sort of video game.

 

Chabashira was laying on her stomach on the carpet in front of them, watching her friends and chastising them for making stupid moves.

 

Yonaga was seated in an armchair with what he assumed to be a sketchbook and a pen, hard at work.

 

Shinguji was sporting a surgical mask and curled up in the armchair next to her, looking over her shoulder.

 

They were all alive.

 

As Kokichi walked in with Amami and Akamatsu by his side, the room grew quiet. Everyone had stopped what they were doing. Everyone’s eyes were planted firmly on him.

 

For what seemed like the millionth time all he could do was cry.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! i may continue this but i'm not exactly sure yet. comments & criticism are always appreciated


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